


Smells Like Home

by navaan



Category: Fables - Willingham
Genre: Character Study, Community: comicdrabbles, F/M, Ficlet, Introspection, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2131833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bigby has a moment to reminisce</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smells Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Ccomicdrabbles LJ Community prompt #086 tree.

He picks up smoking, because it's the only way to make himself deal with it. This world of humans is full of smell and stink and fragrance. Once having a nose like his had been good, and advantage; living in the forests of the homelands, smelling nature, smelling prey, smelling the enemy long before he was upon you.

The moment he stepped into the world of humans, his nose drove him crazy. 

And even now, having lived in this human body, lived among both the human bodied fables and a city full of mundies, the only way to not run back crying to the closest forest, turn wolf, go back to the way things once had been when he had nobody to care about but himself, and never look back, was to light another cigarette and make sure his sense of smell was numbed down enough to make him get through the days without snapping.

Sometimes he really misses the old days.

Not the killing. Not the lone wolf routine. 

Not that he'd ever admit as much.

Just the forest, being self-reliant, having all your senses work _for_ you instead of against you.

He leaves the Woodland building to take his smoking outside. On his way out he nods at Flycatcher, who is busy sweeping the floors, and walks past Grimble, who once again is fast asleep on the job. He lights his cigarette before he's even out of the door. In the end he ends up standing beneath one of the trees in front of the building, touching the bark and enjoying how the smell of wood and leaves and grass mingles with the the smoke; reminds him of the forest. His little place of home in his Fabletown exile.

It's not enough to make him forget the city, the smell of sweat and decay, the mix of food and people, fumes and pollution, alluring and repulsive, but just for now it's perfect.

And there is another sent. Something else. Something special. Something sweet.

Someone clears his throat behind him, and he knows who it is even before he turns around. “Snow,” he greets.

She looks at him sternly. “Do you have to hide our here?”

“You're just miffed I've stepped on the grass again.”

Her lips purse and her brow creases in a frown. “Would you come with me to the business office, please, Sheriff?”

He smiles, stomps out his cigarette, making her frown even more. She walks in front of him, as they return to the building, her smell an alluring, _different_ thing he can never get enough of, never figure out.

All these years he hadn't found out why she smelt so different from all the others, so uniquely her. 

“Another troublesome day in Fabeltown,” she remarked as they entered the elevator.

“Wouldn't like to be anywhere else,” he told her with a sardonic smile, but meant every word.

He has not solved this mystery yet, but one day he surely will. Here and nowhere else.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also read and comment on livejournal [here](http://navaan.livejournal.com/149524.html).


End file.
